Stephen Pope

Microsoft made its highly anticipated, new-generation flight simulation game available for free download a day earlier than originally announced, but that only seemed to ensure the negative reaction to Flight, available for the PC, came early as well. Pilots generally are giving the game a thumbs down for taking a big step backward from the […]

The FAA has shot down a proposal that sought to expand driver’s license medicals to all pilots flying aircraft weighing 6,000 pounds or less – but that hasn’t stopped AOPA and EAA from continuing to push for the change. The agency denied a 2009 petition calling for the switch that received more than 1,000 supportive […]

A United Express Embraer 170 made an emergency landing at Newark Liberty International Airport on Monday evening after the airplane’s nose gear failed to deploy, closing the busy New York-area airport for about 30 minutes as emergency crews dealt with the incident. Passengers and crew aboard the flight evacuated safely on the airplane’s emergency slides. […]

Remember the old joke about helicopters being a loose collection of parts flying in formation? Well here’s an example of a helicopter on the ground whose loose collection of parts suddenly decided to become a lot looser. The self-imposed destruction of this Helibras-built AS350 AStar happened in Brazil on Feb. 23. Ground resonance is thought […]

A few weeks ago we reported on an upcoming job fair being put together by Wasinc International, China’s largest pilot placement firm, and hosted by Pan Am International Flight Academy at its training centers in Miami and Las Vegas. What was unusual about the event was the airlines being represented. There were 12 Chinese carriers […]

It was supposed to have been a fun December evening spent viewing the twinkling Christmas lights around Dallas from the lofty vantage point of an Aviat Husky. Instead, joy turned to tragedy moments after the flight ended, when the Husky’s passenger, a 23-year-old fashion model named Lauren Scruggs, climbed out of the airplane onto the […]

Remember that runway overrun by an F-16C at Oshkosh last summer (see it on video here)? Plenty of armchair pilots speculated about why it might have happened, with possible causes centering on what many presumed was a brake problem or perhaps too high an airspeed on final. It turns out that not a single one […]

Cirrus Aircraft said it delivered more airplanes in the fourth quarter of 2011 than any since 2008, handing the Duluth, Minnesota, manufacturer its strongest performance of the last 12 quarters and reason for optimism heading into 2012. “Several factors came together in the fourth quarter to make it one of the strongest in recent memory,” […]

I got an e-mail the other day from a reader with a heart-wrenching story that should serve as a cautionary tale for all pilots. He told me about a good friend of his who was killed, along with the friend’s wife and kids, in an airplane crash last summer in Idaho. Because the two were […]

LightSquared said on Tuesday that it will lay off nearly half of its employees after the Federal Communications Commission last week blocked the company’s plans for a nationwide 4G network that testing shows interferes with GPS signals. LightSquared said it will layoff nearly half of its 330 employees, calling the move a “prudent and necessary […]